The first trip of the summer
was to Hasselt in Belgium for the International Youth Cup.This
is an amazing tournament with 158 tables over 7 halls in the
locality of the town of Hasselt. We had a club team in the Under
14 category. They were Shane Foster, Niall Mcdonnell, Andrew
Holohan and (from Ballina)Michael McDonnell at the evnt in addition
to Mark O'Flynn and Gavin Maguire who were representing the
Irish team.
There was a brief training camp in the days
before the tournament and although this did not prove to be
very good it was some practice for the players prior to the
tournament.
The tournament was a good standard but both
Shane and Andy won 12 singles each which in any overseas tournament
is a good achievement. the team narrowly lost out on a place
in the quarter finals after finishing third in their group.
It was a great experience for them and certainly gave the players
the impetus to improve later in the summer.
Both Mark
and Gavin played well on the Irish Under 12 boys team but Mark
was plagued by injury including hitting his hand off the table
and this limited his performance.
Overall it was a good
start to what proved to be an exciting summer.